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Apps / Municipal government

Use this app to see how much money you can save on your commercial water bill

The Water Department built an app to help commercial property owners see how much money they can save by adding things like green roofs and rain gardens to their properties.

The Water Department's new app calculates potential savings for commercial property owners. (Screenshot)

If the owners of the Comcast Center installed a green roof, they’d save $342 every month off their water bill — that’s 82 percent of what the city charges the Comcast Center in stormwater fees.
We calculated that number with the Water Department’s newest app, which lets commercial property owners see how much they could save on stormwater fees if they made certain improvements, like adding a green roof or a rain garden.
Use it
The Water Department built the app in response to questions from commercial property owners about how they could save money on their stormwater bills. The department launched it in tandem with a 186-page guide on the same topic. It’s a clever move on the Water Department’s part — use the easy web app to get people’s attention and offer more information in a manual for those who want it. It’s also a good example of how the city can and should use open data: identify a public need and build an app around it. Feels very lean startupy.

Companies: Philadelphia Water Department
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